During the 2025 Annual Meeting, MACH held an evening session on May 27th entitled ‘Envisioning Housing That is Safe and Affordable: A MACH climate-focused public event’. Hosted on the Rutgers New Brunswick campus, this event was open to all annual meeting attendees, as well as members of the general public. The goal was for diverse knowledge holders to explore the intersection of coastal climate risk and safe, affordable, housing through a panel discussion, interactive roundtables and graphic facilitation.
The panel was moderated by Zoe Linder-Baptie, lead of stakeholder engagement for MACH, and included MACH Senior Personnel, Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University, MACH CSAP member, Robert Freudenberg of Regional Plan Association, Chris Sturm of New Jersey Future, and Saundra Malanowicz of the City of Philadelphia’s Division of Housing & Community Development. Panelists were asked to share how their organization or expertise was contributing to the intersection of climate science and housing affordability and to offer insights into the opportunity this intersection presents.
After the panel discussion, panelists and members of the audience participated in table discussions on what we might need to achieve to get to a future vision of affordable, climate-resistant housing options for the northeast megaregion.
MACH invited a graphic recorder, Drew Dernavich from Crowley & Co. to document the panel and table discussions. The final graphic is below: